LimeWire and RIAA face off in court struggle

RIAA lawyers tell judge the amount of money lost to free file sharing service LimeWire is "mind-boggling".

In another blow by the music industry against online piracy, a federal court in New York has been asked by lawyers working for the Recording Industry Association of America to issue an injunction to close P2P file sharing service LimeWire.

The request follows hot on the heels of a court ruling in favour of the RIAA last month, saying that LimeWire and its creator, Mark Gorton, "committed copyright infringement, engaged in unfair competition, and induced copyright infringement."

LimeWire is the daddy of the illegal file sharing industry, with over 200 million downloads of its software logged on download.com. A plucky spokesperson for the company said that they were looking forward to their day in court on Monday and to proving that "as a matter of fact and law there is no support for this motion".

The RIAA lawyers claim that, all told, LimeWire has cost their client hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars, and are looking for a massive $150,000 per infringement from the company (or 150,000 times the cost of a song on iTunes), and told the court that the amount of money lost "boggles the mind."